tl;dr By now, everybody has heard of the memo that was passed around by the Google-bro, claiming that Google should reduce its efforts at explicit diversity hiring and how his message was unwelcome within Google’s halls; my reaction is that he had a small point, but it was drowned in the inanity of his larger, and far more incorrect, message.

For many years, I’ve quietly mentored a few speakers in the industry.
Nothing big, nothing formal, just periodically I’d find somebody that
wanted to get in front of audiences and speak, and either they’d ask
me some questions or I’d get the feeling that they were open to some
suggestions, and things would sort of go from there. Now, as I start
to wind down my speaking career (some), I thought I’d post some ideas
and suggestions I’ve had over the years.

For many years, I’ve quietly mentored a few speakers in the industry.
Nothing big, nothing formal, just periodically I’d find somebody that
wanted to get in front of audiences and speak, and either they’d ask
me some questions or I’d get the feeling that they were open to some
suggestions, and things would sort of go from there. Now, as I start
to wind down my speaking career (some), I thought I’d post some ideas
and suggestions I’ve had over the years.

It’s that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year.
As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years’
predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I
think the new year has to offer us.

tl;dr The talk is given, and inevitably, some well-meaning soul asks you afterwards, “How did
it go?” I won’t tell you how to answer, but for me, the answer is always, “I have no idea;
that’s for them to judge, not me.”

tl;dr When doing a presentation, there should always be some kind of “story” to the presentation.
It doesn’t have to be a full-blown Shakespearean “Things get worse, things get a little better, then
things get way worse, and either they eventually get better (a comedy) or they just end worse (a tragedy)”
plot arc, but your audience needs to have a narrative arc to the talk that they can sort of hang on to
while you’re doing your thing. And, as it turns out, you need it as much as they do.

tl;dr In the wake of the recent Simone Biles “scandal”, it’s important for people who are in like
situations to stand up and be counted. So, although this is something I’ve never really kept a secret,
it’s well past time to ‘fess up and admit: I, too, have been diagnosed with ADD.

More than a decade ago, I published
Effective Enterprise Java,
and in the opening chapter I talked about the Ten Fallacies of Enterprise Computing, essentially an
extension/add-on to Peter Deutsch’s Fallacies of Distributed Computing. But in the ten-plus years
since, I’ve had time to think about it, and now I’m convinced that Enterprise Fallacies are a different
list. Now, with the rise of cloud computing stepping in to complement, supplment or replace entirely
the on-premise enterprise data center, it seemed reasonable to get back to it.